There was a nispero tree in the garden laden with acid yellow fruit, and Appleby ate the handful Harper brought him greedily, for he was slightly feverish and grimed with dust. Then they smoked the peasant’s maize-husk cigarettes and watched the purple lizards crawl about the fire-blackened ruins of the house. They could hear the rasp of machetes amidst the cane and the musical clink of hoes, while now and then a hum of voices reached them from the village; and once, with a great clatter, a mounted man in uniform went by.
Harper lay still, drowsily content to rest; but those sounds of human activity troubled Appleby. The men who made them had work to do, and a roof to shelter them when their toil was done, but he was drifting aimlessly as the red leaves he had watched from the foot-bridge one winter day in England. Tony stood beside him then, and he wondered vaguely what Tony was doing now—playing the part of gentleman steward to Godfrey Palliser with credit to himself and the good will of his uncle’s tenants, riding through English meadows, meeting men who were glad to welcome him in London clubs, or basking in the soft gleam of Violet Wayne’s eyes. It was the latter only that Appleby envied him; and he wondered whether Tony, who had so much, knew the full value of the love that had been given him as the crown of all, and then brushed the thoughts away when Harper rose.
“We have got to make Arucas by to-night, or lie out starving, which is a thing I have no use for,” he said. “It’s a long hustle.”
Appleby rose, and staggered as he placed his weight upon his injured foot, and then, while Harper laid a steadying hand on his shoulder, limped out into the carretera. It stretched away before them, white, and hot, and straight, with scarcely a flicker of shadow to relieve its blinding glare; and Appleby half closed his eyes, while the perspiration dripped from Harper’s face.
“And it’s quite often I’ve sworn I’d turn farmer and never go to sea again! Well, I guess there are more fools like me!”
Appleby had no observation to make, and they plodded on through a land of silence and intolerable heat. No Latin who can help it works at that hour of the afternoon, and peon and soldier alike lay where there was coolness and shadow wrapped in restful sleep. Only the two aliens crawled on with aching heads and dazzled eyes down the dusty road which rolled back interminably to their weary feet. The cane was no longer green to Appleby, but steeped in yellow glare, the dust gleamed incandescent white, and the sky seemed charged with an overwhelming radiancy.
Still, he limped on, dreaming, while each step cost him agony, of the brown woods at Northrop and the sheen of frost on the red brier leaves in the English lanes, for all that he had seen during that last eventful fortnight there flashed into his memory. He could recall the chill of the night air when he stood looking into the future from the face of the hill as he went to meet keeper Davidson; the sweep of velvet lawn, the song of the robin on the lime bough in the bracing cold of morning, and plainer than all the face of the woman he had made a promise to under the soft light in the conservatory. He did not know what that promise would cost him when he made it; but the woman had read his character, and was warranted in deciding that it would be kept.
No road, however, goes on interminably, and the white aldea of Arucas rose before them when the sun was low. They plodded into it, limping and stumbling over the slippery stones, and frightening the dark-eyed children with their grim faces; for there was a hum of life behind the lattices now, and a cooking of the comida in the patios and in front of the open doors. Harper sniffed hungrily—for the pungent odors of the dark green oil and garlic hung about the flat-topped houses—and finally halted before an archway leading into a shadowy patio. There was a legend above it.
“‘The Golden Fleece’!” he said. “Well, they’ll have some wine here, and I’ve got five pesetas.”
They went in, and when they limped into the guest chamber a man dressed in unstarched linen stared at them aghast.